Premonitions

Chapter Five

Griffyn pulled into his driveway, almost hitting one of his mother's ceramic flowerpots.
     "Damn. I need to watch where I'm going," he breathed out as he turned the steering wheel.
     "Your mom would've killed you if you'd hit that," I whispered, tired. I yawned, stretching my arms up as far as they could go in the car. It wasn't that far, even if I was short.
     "Crimson... Are you sure you're okay? What happened? Did that Canton asshole get to you? What'd he do? What did Mark do about it? Are you--"
     I cut him off. "Griffyn, it wasn't the Canton boy. I already told you this. You're lucky I'm not snapping at you right now. I'm really tired and I just want to sleep. Please." I yawned again, almost cutting myself off.
     "Since your dad's not home, my mom said you could sleep over tonight. My sister's out of the house tonight for a party; you can sleep in there." Griffyn reassuringly said. He put his hand on my shoulder for a second, and I flinched.
     I breathed out. "I'm sorry, Griffyn. I'm just... Still on edge..." I looked away uncomfortably; his hand was still on my shoulder. I shrugged his hand off of my shoulder. "Sorry. I trust you, but... After all that's happened..."
     Griffyn looked over at me, pained. "When will you feel comfortable with telling me what happened? Does it have something to do with the nightmare you had?" He sighed anxiously, and took the keys out of the ignition. He tucked them in his pocket, then pulled them back out and twirled them around his finger. He stopped twirling them and held them in his hand, then put them back in his pocket. "You brought a change of clothes, right? You can wear them tomorrow. Just... Don't worry tonight. Your dad wants you to stay here; he knows you'll be safer here since there're other people in the house."
     I sighed yet again. I seemed to be sighing a lot these days. "'Kay," I whispered. "Thanks."
     I looked over at Griffyn, not moving my head. He was biting his lip. He must've been really worried. He still was.
     I pushed my hair back, still shaken over what had happened with Mark, even though it had been almost eleven hours since then. I sighed yet again.
     "Looks like today's a sighing day," I said, in an attempt to reassure Griffyn, even though I was the one who needed reassurance. I chuckled slightly, then stopped once I realized Griffyn wasn't listening. I pushed my hair back, then itched my nose. "Well, umm..." I paused. I breathed out, "Griffyn, please don't be worried about me. Please. I don't need you to worry about me. You have enough to worry about already. Okay?"
     Griffyn turned his head and shoulders to glance at me, then bit his lip again. "Crimson," he said, and his face took on an expression of worry and angst. All of a sudden, his expression changed to one of anger; no, one of red-hot fury. The words spilled out of his mouth: "Crimson, as your best friend since sixth grade, I am allowed to say that I am worried about you. We are all human; we all need someone to worry about us so we don't get too far over our heads, and we..." He trailed off, and frantically looked everywhere, as if searching for words. "And we need to live without feeling worried about ourselves because there are more important things to worry about!"
     I combed through my hair with my fingers, then breathed out through my nose.
That's where you're wrong, I thought as I pushed the car door open and hopped out of the passenger seat. That's where you are so very wrong.

During the springtime in the sprawling mountains of Vermont, it was still as chilly in the mornings as it had been in the wintertime. The mountain winds howled, and you could hear them even in the bustling town square, where people sold all kinds of things: Foods, sports equipment, clothing, and lots of other tourist-y things.
Sometimes, the winds caused problems. And sometimes, Crimson could hear screams on the winds.
They were usually the screams of people whose deaths she had predicted or the deaths to come.
The main problem with the winds was just that Crimson could sometimes hear those screams even if she was listening to music. The breeze would manage to flow past her noise-blocking earbuds and she'd all of a sudden be interrupted by the endless screeching of terrified people. No matter how hard she tried to block out the screams, she just couldn't. She'd tried many things: turning up her music, which never worked; buying extreme noise-cancelling headphones, which never worked; getting more sleep (which was something a therapist had prescribed to her), which never worked. The screaming wouldn't stop. For a while, Crimson had convinced herself that she'd been going crazy.
She'd been hearing the screams since before she'd received her first premonition. Her dad had been telling her that it was her overactive imagination, which she had had (she had been a very... Creative child. She'd watched too many zombie movies over her dad's shoulder when he'd thought she was in her room, asleep). Now, obviously, it hadn't been her overactive imagination that had caused her to hear those those things.
She had never told her father about any of the premonitions. He'd never asked, and she'd never cared to tell him. She didn't know how crazy he'd think she'd be. So she'd never told him.
     The endless screeching interrupted everything; sometimes she wouldn't be able to fall asleep at night.
     The screams filled every single part of her life, no matter what she was doing; if she was taking a test, they wouldn't stop, if she was sleeping, they wouldn't stop, if she was doing something as mundane as writing, they wouldn't stop. They would only stop if she was playing her violin or singing. She assumed they stopped at these times because of the haunting sound of the violin and the mesmerizing sound of her soprano voice. The only times they'd stop was if she was making music.

This night, at Griffyn's house, Crimson didn't sing, she didn't play the violin, she didn't even hum. She just let the endless screaming take over her until she was swallowed.